MJ Berends

One must never confuse a loss function for an application

AI will absolutely revolutionize surveillance and weaponry and that is not hype

I find it hard to square the preciousness about "why would someone ever stay on Twitter?" when everyone on this site knows that the community here intentionally chased off lots of people.

“… for no kingdom can maintain itself by force alone. Force does not work the way its advocates seem to think it does. it does not, for example, reveal to the victim the strength of his adversary. On the contrary, it reveals the weakness, even the panic of his adversary…” - James Baldwin

It is true that anyone with an internet connection can do horrible things to another person. But it does matter if you make it easier to do harassment at scale and that 50% of Grok requests are harassment should be a broad source of shaming

Rough vibes on this website today, likely because people feel Hopeless and Helpless Because Can't Stop It and No One Who Is Supposed To Is Trying To So Now We're Fighting Each Other™. I recommend activities such as book, or potentially instrument if you like instrument, or even do talk on phone.

The end goal of Grok sexual harassment is to make women afraid to be visible. It’s a punishment for daring to exist in a way the perpetrators can’t control. There’s no one solution to this, because the problem isn’t just technological. It’s cultural. It’s misogyny. This is just one expression of it.

Himes: "I was delighted to hear that Tom Cotton, chairmen of the Senate Intel Committee, has been in regular contact with the admin. I've had zero outreach and no D I'm aware of has. So apparently we're now in a world where the legal obligation to keep Congress informed only applies to your party."

It’s fairly concerning that just 2-3 people have managed to buy and flip many of the major news sources in the US. Like, the economic value of all news is not that much, they could buy the rest too

Marco Rubio is reportedly saying Maduro will stand trial in US courts. Which means it’s now the US administration’s position that US courts can hold foreign presidents, but not the US president, accountable for crimes.

Tonight, the President of the United States has launched an unconstitutional war of aggression, dooming another generation to spill their blood for oil, and lay waste to a sovereign nation. I demand that Congress exercise its power, halt this conflict, and impeach this war criminal president.

The same editorial board described Seattle’s mayor raising taxes to pay for childcare as a totalitarian power grab

You're god damned right. Every word.

I am struggling with what might be a generational experience. The gulf war was pretty politically formative for me. It’s not history so much as memory this time. It is destabilizing to see almost the exact same gameplan but this time without the guardrails that at the time I took for granted.

Eagerly awaiting the first time a pundit says it’s inappropriate to criticize the president because we’re at war

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

It’s almost like green energy is the only way forward and a handful of oil barons are doing everything in their power to keep that from happening so they can get even richer at the cost of literally everything else in the world.

I gave a talk on Wednesday at the Bay Area AI Security Meetup about prompt injection, MCP security and the lethal trifecta. Here are the annotated slides from my presentation, including notes on my weird hobby of trying to coin or amplify new terms of art simonwillison.net/2025/Aug/9/b...

no one cares that this is illegal but it is illegal and seems like something that might trip the court’s “major questions” doctrine

it’s even more demoralizing when the history you’re repeating is history you were around for the first time

Why are no headlines focusing on the unconstitutional and dictatorial nature of this action?

Deep cut for true weebs youtube.com/@biwakokun?s...

The soft bigotry of low expectations

Trump at the Bat

If you were too young in 2003 here is what Bush told the American people: 1) The Iraq War won’t cost a lot of money 3) We won’t need a lot of troops 4) We’ll bring peace and freedom to Iraq 5) We’ll find WMDs 6) We’ll be welcomed as liberators 7) It will be easy 8) It won’t take long All lies.

We have a madman in the White House who is actively trying to trigger total war. If Jeffries, Schumer, or any other Democratic leaders try to justify this, shrug indifferently, or write a strongly-worded letter and call it a day, they need to step down or be aggressively primaried.

still think this is one of the greatest posts ever made

Whoever came up with the phrase 「のど元過ぎれば熱さを忘れる」never watched Hot Ones

Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen.

Lots of talk today about the demise of BlueSky. For whatever it's worth, it's been a boon to indie publishers like us. Twitter and Facebook have pretty much silenced us, so the engagement here has, and continues to be, wonderful.

Important thing to beat people over the head with: Trump has turned American cities into warzones and for fucking what? Prices are way up, jobs will be way down, the dollar is worth less, and now the highway is blocked off by cops. Maybe the Great Mythical Immigrant wasn’t the problem after all.

Senator Ted Cruz posted a dramatic video of LAPD cars on fire with the caption “this… is… not… peaceful.” What he didn’t mention? The footage was from 2020, not 2025. His post on X falsely implied it was current, part of a broader effort to spread lies and manufacture a crisis.

I’ve read too much science fiction too many dystopian novels and too many poems on civil rights to be quiet…

looks like an objective assessment to me

There is no mass-deportation campaign going on right now. Deportation is a process. This is kidnapping and human trafficking.

The illegitimate, lawless, and authoritarian regime in control of the government of the United States is at war with the people of the United States.

i don't want to dunk on any of the people who replied or quoted this with a "well ackshully the national guard will shoot protesters, look at kent state," but my request is to a) remember that kent state was over half a century ago and b) read about the NG's response in its aftermath

Decided to coin the word “エッグイgious”

everything means the opposite for these people. freedom means your freedom to obey. the first amendment means their freedom to tell you what you can read and think.

Texans, flee the nanny state and come up north to enjoy the land of the free. www.texastribune.org/2025/05/21/t...

Bad people know that one way to control people is to make them feel economically uncertain, so more of their time is spent worrying about their own precarity and less on the general welfare and/or what the bad people are doing. There's a reason the current administration is undermining the economy.

America cannot long remain free, nor first among nations, if it becomes the kind of place where universities are dismantled because they don't align politically with the current head of the government.

This is an absolutely insane way to run a country

Recession indicator: Indeed app is above TikTok in the App Store

What do alligator’s watch on tv? Wanime

Usefully clear reasoning here. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/o...

If you abduct someone and send them involuntarily and without recourse to a country where they've never lived to be imprisoned, that isn't deportation, it's human trafficking

It’s been a bad week for progressive protectionists lol